24 February 2014

Polychronies

Opening today, Monday, February 24 at 12:30 pm slt, is an exhibition of new works by Gem Preiz, Polychronies, at the sim le Bronx, through the invitation of Kindy Toxx and Milady Ghost. (From the teleport at the landing point, head to le Bronx, and then head into the gallery welcome space to teleport up to the exhibition, which will not be open for visitors until 12:30 today.) As with Gem's previous shows, Polychronies presents works of fractal art on a majestic scale.

I must admit that I'm usually not too keen on "real life" artwork exhibitions in virtual spaces—the image quality generally suffers from being compressed down to a maximum of 1024x1024 pixels, and Second Life isn't very friendly about stitching multiple 1024x1024 images together—there are artifacts at the seams. But Gem has found a (laborious) way around this challenge, and the result is that his images when presented are immersive: at up to 60 meters wide, they can encompass our entire field of view, and the images shown here don't really manage to convey the experience.

The seventeen images in Polychronies are presented in several rooms connected by walkways—you'll literally need to move through some of the artworks, and you can follow the paths of the little robot orbs if you'd like (or even try to hop a ride on one). As I write this, Gem is still working on the English language notes for the exhibition, but we sense that we're perhaps looking at the temples of ancient civilizations—somehow imbued with a sci-fi feel. If by chance you have the space to display the images, they're all available for purchase along with an exhibition catalog.